


seek and you shall

by KeanBlade



Series: color in red [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 04:46:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19863706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeanBlade/pseuds/KeanBlade
Summary: Tobirama lived on in those who loved him





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired to keep going on this by the amazing thoughtful people who asked great questions that got me so excited in the first installment.  
> (Sharked, kitsunesongs, Miray, Kuroteshi, gg113, and a few others, you guys are why this is a thing now)

She seeks for remnant of him in the fragments he left behind. The scattered detritus left of his beloved lab when the self-destruct seal is done; all of those things he deemed most dangerous gone (almost). She finds the pieces of himself he thought to throw away, the bits of his heart he didn't think others would value. The most precious of them are the oldest; written in a shaky unpracticed hand they are the thoughts of a too smart little boy who just wanted his brothers back and didn't know he shouldn't break the world to do it. (Tiny stories to himself of days gone by and small faces peer up at her from the margins.)

She finds nothing of his brothers in Hashirama. He refuses to speak of Tobirama and turns his face away from any mention of his other brothers. Mito searched for them in him; where was Itama who like a magpie loved bright things and was weaned on the milk of bitterness? Kawarama who was so, so, clever and so, so, young? Where are the stories of childish pranks and shared memories, all the little things gathered over a life? (What about _their_ children? Would he weep to meet them? Tobirama would have wept to be an uncle- she had looked forward to it.)

Mito gave those scraps of Tobirama’s heart to Madara in a burst of anger- she wanted to Hashirama to see how much it _should_ hurt, so she hit him in the only soft spot she could (even in her anger she wouldn’t endanger the peace, not after all that had been lost for it). She still can't decide if she regrets it or not (she doesn’t, not when she sees how he treasures them).


	2. search

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kagami sought for a place to be

He seeks for a place in the corners of the village, the places his clan never goes. He is so different from them anyway (it’s not the shade of his hair) that it seems the only place to look. He stumbles on Madara-Sama there, talking to the children he once would have been forced to kill and more at peace than Kagami had ever seen him. Madara-Sama sees him there and calls him to his side to hear the stories that the other children tell; and Kagami aches for the idea of a teacher who collected the lost and confused and treated them all the same- would he have accepted Kagami? Madara-Sama seems to think so and Kagami knows that Madara-Sama knew him best (he has heard to story of Madara-Sama’s one great love- Uchiha’s only ever really love once and then with everything they are- when unseen he hears Izuna tell it in a voice weeping bitterness).

He finds a place to start in Tobirama, even in his absence. While he was searching for a man that seemed to linger in the shadows of the village he should have been the center of, he found those who would lead him forward. Mito-Sama found him lingering there even as Madara-Sama slipped away more and more, she saw him standing in the shadows of other people and beckoned him to follow her (she was amazing; regal and smart and fierce, and one of the greatest shinobi ever and she wanted to teach _him_ ).

Kagami is the only one Madara-Sama looks to before he leaves- had the brothers ever been that close? Why had Izuna fought so against peace even when it broke his brother's spirit to go on in war? And Kagami smiles as best he can and lets Madara-Oniisama go. That night he curls against Mito-Sama as she goes through the work of keeping a village safe and he doesn’t regret saying goodbye with a smile (not even when it all goes wrong, not even then).


	3. move on

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mito looks to the future

Mito looks for a man she can love in Hashirama. She thinks there is one there but it’s hard to look as she should with so much unsaid between them. She makes her own way, its not even unexpected- after all she was the main negotiator for the Senju in the first throws of peace- but she would like to think that he could walk beside her. And maybe that should start with her this time, someday she must forgive if not forget. That day comes when Hashirama comes back from the valley and leaves behind his second greatest folly as he sheers off his long, long, hair; the lasting banner of his pride (and it is pride, a blatant taunt that no one can even get close enough to touch it).

She finds then that this is a man she can grow old with. Not perfect but enough. And then she allows herself to turn to having children, now that she can trust that their father will not drive them to terrible glory is search of what he will never give. Even now Tobirama is an ache in her, a brother she never expected to find, and she seems to be ever more the only person that remembers him as a man, a _good_ man, as those that knew him slip away from the village one by one. So Mito cultivates the pieces she has of him, the knowledge she collected from his ashes, the children that she teaches (and Tobirama would have _adored_ Kagami, sometimes she think she can feel his delight in the boy).

Mito lets time wear down her sorrow and her pain; she in a princess of Uzushio, she knows what effect the ocean has if given space, and she lets time like the tide wear her grief smooth and polished. She endures and she grows, ever changing and always steady, she takes the world as it comes at her and never lets it see her bow beneath it (her mother told her once; you are a woman of Uzushio, cry all that salt-water tears in the sea but always wear waterproof makeup).


	4. go back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kagami gathers before the storm

Kagami looked for something he could fight for. Something in the here and now; he could not always fight for a memory Mito-Sama told him the day she gave him the silver happuri still etched with the old Senju symbol and scratched with the marks of war. He decided that day that he wouldn’t wear it until he knew why; of everything Kagami knew about Tobirama-Sama the clearest was that he was a man of singular resolve, unfaltering almost to the point of fear (Izuna had murmured it a time or two, that the White Demon could not be turned away once set, not by anything but his brother- and Kagami didn’t know _which_ brother.)

He finds himself watching the village sometimes. Tracking the comings and goings to tell Mito-Sama later; wondering which of his agemates he would have known in another world, would he have learned with them? Who would they have become in a different world? What would the village be in a different world? He reaches for that other him, wondering, always wondering; would Izuna have fallen beneath Kumo blades there? Would the Uchiha be happier there? But looking at the old metal, he could almost feel a cool presence on his back, a warm hand on his head, a gentle sense of amusement, oh, oh. That was the point wasn’t it, he breathed in deep as Madara-Oniisama had taught him and hovered on the edge of the dive (the second before the falcon stoops, the final of gathering resolve, and then, _and then_ ,)

Kagami put the happuri on. He stands as straight as he can and walks into the sunlight, if Tobirama-Oniisama could do it he could to; he wasn’t just a remnant of a greater man- he would make the man who wore this first proud and then someday he would pass it on to another child. He walks with his older brothers into the sun (Madara-Oniisama told him once; you are an Uchiha, take care where you place your heart, for you will _never_ forget it when it breaks).


	5. look harder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mito lets go

Mito finds she loves all her children, and she adores her grandchildren, but Kushina is different. Kushina is her secret keeper, her living legacy, the only one who knows every secret Mito ever learnt, and she's given every power Mito can bestow; she maybe the jinchuriki but she will always be the woman Mito raised first. It is Kushina she tells her stories too, the ones that no one else hears, about Madara as a good man and Touka as a brilliant woman, about the way her lost brother breathed life into the few people around him to the extent that those closest found they couldn’t breath without him (she tells her about perfect makeup in battle and unceasing devotion to loved ones, about the man that raised a child even after he died).

She looks for every place that Tobirama touched and shows them to Kushina; she wants someone to remember him when she who is the last of them is gone. He was a good man Mito tells her, but that is not the only reason I tell you this. I have given you the power to break the world so you must first understand this; there is power in the unspoken heart and devotion is the greatest weapon of all. Take care of what you leave behind, and never forget the story of my brother. Kushina doesn’t understand Mito fears, but she has done her part and will greet her rest without remorse (Tobirama went without remorse too she thinks, and there are few deaths she would rather emulate).

She finds that the sound of the sea seems to reach up for her as she goes, and lets all that she has gathered to her drift away. Far, far, away she can hear a terrible battle, the sounds of her people dying, the roars of a fearsome beast, the heartrending sobbing of a lonely child, and the sound of Madara laughing through his tears. But she is beyond them and they recede from her as she fades from them and she **_finds_**


End file.
